|
|
|
|
|
|
by lolinder
705 days ago
|
|
|
Your version makes it sound like Apple gave Xerox $1M in stock in exchange for the visit. Most sources I can find don't mention the stock at all, but the one that does [0] makes it pretty clear that the offer was to let Xerox buy stock from Apple pre-IPO in exchange for the tour, which is a very different story: > Jobs's company stood on the precipice of a public offering guaranteed to make him and any investors wealthy, and the tech guru's impending good fortune enticed the suits at Xerox to make him an offer he couldn't refuse: Let us buy shares in your company, and we'll give you a peek inside the greatest minds in your field. [0] https://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-apple-steve-jobs-xer... |
|
|
However, Steve did leverage the fact that Xerox was an investor to bully the on-site engineers into providing him with the "executive" demo, after receiving the run-of-the-mill public demo and learning that a higher-tier demo existed. It involved a phone call to east coast Xerox Corporate, who instructed the on-site engineers to provide the full demo. The PARC lab director was OOO that day, and later said in an interview that he would have stonewalled Job's request.
Another fun fact, Xerox sold (the majority of?) their stake in Apple almost immediately for a quick turnaround profit post-IPO. Obviously there's no recorded reason for that trade, but my impression is that they didn't think Apple had what it takes to build a proper OS (they envied their ability to cheaply assemble hardware, but viewed their software suite/R&D as a big moat).
Edit: also, Apple engineers were already mid-working on replicating PARC tech at the time of the (not-so-) "fateful" demo. It was behind schedule and not-demoable, and Steve was getting frustrated with these facts. They encouraged Steve to visit PARC to get a preview/demo of what they were building, to ground him to their works' value. There were already a handful of ex-PARC people at Apple for a while, at this point, and PARC's work stems from "The Mother of All Demos" given decades ago. The Alto was unique in its early implementation, but not in its ideas.